On Tuesday, I watched the Space Shuttle Discovery piggyback over Old Town Alexandria with several hundred others who gathered at the waterfront. When Discovery appeared in the sky, I cried. The intensity of emotion that flooded over me took me totally by surprise. I thought I was over it — that I’d moved on after the final Space Shuttle mission. I was wrong. It hit me hard.

“One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.” — Sophocles, 400 B.C.

After an emotion-filled experience with Discovery, I changed the focus of my talk from creation of a social media empire to the outcomes from a social space empire — specifically the #SpotTheShuttle campaign. Social media connected us in awe and wonder as we looked up to the skies to witness a seasoned spaceship flying by the power of her Earth-bound transport over the nation’s Capitol on her way to retirement at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy facility.